Lachie Jones inquest: Half-brother denies chilling or freezing body

Wednesday, 1 May 2024

Jonathan Scott, 21, who is the half-brother of dead toddler Lachie Jones, arrives at the Invercargill courthouse on Wednesday morning to give evidence at a coronial inquest into the toddler’s death.

The half-brother of a dead toddler has denied storing the 3-year-old’s body in a freezer until he knew what to do with it.

Jonathan Scott, who is now 21, gave evidence on the death of his half-brother, Lachie Jones, at an inquest being held in Invercargill on Wednesday. Lachie was found dead late on the evening of January 29, 2019, face up in a council oxidation pond near his home.

Scott gave evidence that he bought a bag of marijuana as people searched for Lachie, and that a document his mother produced during her cross examination, which detailed the hours that he says he worked in a motorbike shop on the afternoon of the death, does not have any markings on it verifying that it had been seen by shop staff.

Paul Jones speaks as Day 2 of the Coroners Inquest begins in the Invercargill Court.

During cross examination from lawyer Max Simpkins, who is representing Lachie’s father Paul Jones, Scott admitted he had lied to police about buying cannabis that night because he did not want to get in trouble with police.

Simpkins asked why Scott did not help look for Lachie when his panicked mother told him that the boy was missing.

“There was no reason for you to move a muscle, because you knew your brother was deceased at that stage, didn’t you?” Simpkins asked.

“There was no point in you assisting your mother because you knew where he was - in the ponds.”

Lachie Jones, 3, was found dead in a council oxidation pond near his home on the evening of January 29, 2019.

Scott replied: “That’s your opinion.”

Simpkins put it to Scott that there was evidence that Lachie’s body was described as chilled or frozen when it was found, and that Lachie had died in the 45 minutes that he, his mother and Scott were at home earlier during the afternoon.

He asked whether there was a freezer at the home.

Max Simpkins, the lawyer for Lachie’s father Paul Jones, in court.

“Yes,’’ Scott replied.

When asked if that’s where he put the body while he decided what to do with it, Scott replied: “That’s ridiculous.”

Scott said he got on well with Lachie and often played on the Xbox with him in his room. He described Lachie as being energetic a lot of the time, but he didn’t always listen to his mother.

He also got on well with Lachie’s father in the early days of his relationship with his mother but that soured when Jones would come home from the pub and be abusive, he said.

He did not want Jones in the house after he broke up with his mother, he told the inquest.

Scott said that on the night Lachie died, his mother had asked him to help her look for Lachie, and he walked down Salford St in the direction of the railway tracks to look for him.

He was picked up by a friend and his cousin and taken to an ATM, where he withdrew $50 and bought a bag of cannabis from his friends inside the car.

The inquest into the death of Lachie Jones is held by Auckland-based Coroner Alexander Ho, is in its third day at the Invercargill courthouse.

He admitted that he had previously told police that the $50 was for his brother.

He walked down the other side of Salford St after being dropped off at a closed-down petrol station, until he saw police outside his house.

They asked him to go inside and wait with his mother.

After Lachie’s body had been found he smoked the cannabis with his brother and a neighbour, Scott said.

“We weren’t really talking that much, it was pretty depressing,’’ he said.

The inquest continued on Wednesday afternoon, where neighbour Debbie Vigersis was expected to start giving evidence.